


The Sound of Ideologies Clashing

by Unsentimentalf



Series: Ideologies [1]
Category: Blake's 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5058214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Historical Earth records indicate that the original seven hundred and twenty four settlers left Earth four hundred and eighty years ago to enable them to pursue a philosophy known as Libertarianism.”</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Really?  Avon glanced over at Blake just in time to catch the grimace. “That could be interesting,”  he suggested. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Ideologies Clashing

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was sparked by musings on x_los's excellent [Objectively Attractive](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5005723) which I hope she won't mind me acknowledging as the source of the general idea, even if I took it in a rather different direction.

_And the best of all this bad bunch Is shouting to be heard Above the sound of ideologies clashing._ Billy Bragg, 'Ideology'

 

Avon was sitting on the flight deck feeling bored and disgruntled when the distress call came in.

They’d finally got to the pleasure planet that Vila had been yearning for and had got themselves all set for a week or two of unwinding when Blake had announced that they had to pick up an urgent dead drop message halfway across the sector. Looking round at the appalled faces he had amended that. He and Orac could manage, if the rest of them wanted to stay behind.

“If you’re taking Orac and Liberator then you’re taking me,” Avon had insisted. “I’m not stupid enough to wave you off into the sunset with all our assets”. 

He knew Blake well enough by now to know that the man wasn’t likely to cheat his comrades over something as trivial as money but Avon had thought that maybe a trip alone with Blake might turn out interesting for other reasons. 

He’d been wrong. The dead drop had been a message from a rebel cell asking to be put in touch with nearby groups. Unfortunately they appeared to lack the capacity or sense to encrypt it effectively. By the time Liberator picked it up it had acquired a postscript neatly added by the Federation cruiser captain who had read it first, consisting of high resolution video footage of the destruction of the small satellite that the cell had operated from. Since it was entirely probably that the cruiser had also notified Federation command of the likely path of the Liberator Blake had insisted that they would go back for the others via a particularly tortuous route. 

Blake seemed to have taken the destruction of the incompetent rebels and the cruiser captain’s mockery badly. After a couple of days of his companion being ill tempered and monosyllabic Avon had started to wonder yet again whether staying on Liberator was really likely to get him anything that he wanted in the long term. 

He’d been alone on watch and feeling particularly unappreciated when Zen announced the distress call from the nearest star system. At least it was an excuse to wake Blake up.

“Ida Six,” Blake read off the screen. “Class C planet, cold and dry with a habitable equatorial band. Inhabitants approximately three thousand, no independent spaceflight but they are on several of the regular trade routes trading high value minerals and agricultural products for medium to high tech. Any indication yet of the reason for the distress call, Orac?”

“Report just broadcast from Ida Three indicates a significant meteor strike was observed several hours ago on the opposite side of the planet to the distress call. The resulting atmospheric disturbance is likely to be incompatible with human life for at least three hundred years.”

“Extremely urgent, then. Avon, if you can get a message through tell them we’re coming. Zen, how long till teleport range?”

“Teleport range will be achieved in twenty three minutes and eighteen point nine seconds.” 

“One more point that may be of interest, “ Orac said. “Historical Earth records indicate that the original seven hundred and twenty four settlers left Earth four hundred and eighty years ago to enable them to pursue a philosophy known as Libertarianism.”

Really? Avon glanced over at Blake just in time to catch the grimace. “That could be interesting,” he suggested. “What sort of Libertarian philosophy, Orac? From the little I can remember on the subject there were several rather different versions.”

“No further information is available.”

“That was five hundred years ago,” Blake said. “Given that their descendants have neither murdered each other in that time nor collectively rendered their planet uninhabitable I think we can safely assume that they grew up and out of whatever lunatic fringe they started off in.”

“That from a democrat. Most of the Federation would still consider you solidly embedded in the thoroughly insane end of the political spectrum, Blake. You could be right, though. They are probably just run of the mill settlers these days. Still,” Avon said. “I think I’ll go down armed, just in case.” 

 

He materialised next to Blake inside the large bunker that the distress call had been coming from. Half of it was already collapsed, just a mass of struts and concrete rising thirty foot upwards. Two dozen arc lamps fixed to the walls barely revealed hundreds of people, some in full environment suits and some just wrapped in blankets, sitting or sleeping next to bundles of possessions on the floor. Dismantled equipment was piled high against the walls. Here and there children ran, their voices lost in the sound of the wind wailing outside. 

They’d come down beside the communications console. Two men huddled up against it, orange suits stark in the gloom and the near freezing cold, attention focused on their earphones and the readouts. Next to them a short woman in her thirties bundled up in what looked to Avon like a real and expensive fur coat stood up and walked towards Blake. Apart from the children and the ominous sway of part of the creaking roof overhead hers seemed to be the only movement in the room.

She looked between them, settled on Blake. “You’re Roj Blake?”

“Yes. This is Avon. You got our message, then?”

Avon looked around again. Without using the shuttle getting this lot off was going to be a logistical nightmare. It wasn’t just the logistics that was worrying him, either.

“From Liberator? Yes, we know your name.” She frowned, turned to one of the men behind her. “Anything from any other ship? Any trace of one at all?”

“No,” the man said, shortly. 

She turned back, the frown staying. “Then we will have to deal with you, Blake. My name is Uva Geraint and for the purpose of this negotiation only I represent all the humans on this world currently known to have survived. We need passage off Ida Six for four hundred and thirty three adults, one hundred and fifty six children under fifteen standard Earth years and approximately three tonnes of equipment and transportation to an appropriate D+ or higher world. Obviously,” she gestured at the roof, “I require an immediate quotation and fulfilment.”

“We can’t take any more equipment than you can carry individually,” Avon said. “In these conditions we can’t bring a shuttle down and the teleport’s only aligned for humans.”

Geraint nodded. “Very well. We will redistribute what we can and leave the rest. Your quotation please. We will be prepared to negotiate a final adjustment of up to ten percent each way.”

Blake gave her a warm smile. “No need for money, Uva. We don’t need your credits and resettlement’s an expensive business. We’re glad to do what we can.” 

“You don’t need our money?” Geraint looked as if she’d bitten into something sour. “Are you offering us charity?”

“We’re offering you help,” Blake said. “And we haven’t got much time. Can we get people to safety and then have this discussion later?” 

“I’m aware of the time element,” she snapped. “It’s my people’s lives at risk here but I will not bargain away their future with either ignorance of a debt or entry into a blatantly unstable arrangement. Will you please either give me a price or go away and leave me to wait for some rational agent to answer our call?” 

This seemed to be as good a time as any at which to point something out that Blake seemed to have missed. “We can’t teleport them up yet anyway,” Avon said to him. 

“Why not?” Blake hissed at him. 

“You can’t just blithely bring hundreds of people aboard Liberator. These people have lost their homes and they might decide to take ours instead. You may not have noticed but they appear to be armed to the teeth.”

Gereint had been listening. Avon saw Blake glance at the sidearm at her side. “Please don’t take any notice of Avon.” Blake said gruffly. “He’s just cautious, that’s all. He doesn’t intend to be insulting.”

“I’m not insulted, rather relieved at the clarity of thought involved. It seems that there may be someone we can talk to who understands enlightened self interest.” She turned to Avon. “Do _you_ comprehend our requirements?” 

The authoritarian Federation was about as far as you could get from a fully fledged capitalist society but aspects of the banking system were sometimes studied using theories of economics that referenced the old style capitalism. Avon had read up on the subject briefly before deciding that knowledge of a dead ideology was going to be of little wider use. He could just about remember how some of the mantras went. 

“You are seeking an agreement where the reward to risk ratio for both parties is sufficiently favourable to make any likely divergence from that course of action suboptimal for either.”

Geraint closed her eyes momentarily in apparent relief. “Yes. Obviously. What other sort of rational agreement is there?”

“I suggest we leave that particular topic for the moment in favour of more pressing matters.” Avon said. He glanced over to Blake who was not looking happy at all. “Let me deal with this.”

Blake sighed and turned to look round the hanger. Avon took that as agreement. “Very well. The price is two hundred credits per person rescued, half for a child, half payable once everyone is on board, half once you land on the new world. Your people and their possessions will travel in one of our holds, fully pressurised, heated and with an identical atmosphere to your original planet. All necessities will be provided in the price but facilities will be basic.” 

Blake had turned back to scowl at him. Avon ignored him. “Liberator will prioritise finding a new planet over all other matters except the safety of the ship and its crew; I estimate that it should take no more than six days. You may keep your weapons in the hold but there will be an automatic forcefield preventing access to the rest of the ship. There is a system of airlocks leading to space which will be under the control of the hold’s occupants thus enabling you to jettison anything valuable if you believe yourselves to be at risk from Liberator’s crew.”

He took a deep breath. “Is that acceptable?” 

“With one proviso. I want to be involved with the search for our new home from your control centre. I won’t interfere with your operations.”

That seemed reasonable. They should be able to keep an eye on one small woman. “You’ll have to give up your gun,” Avon said.

“Agreed. How many people can you teleport at once?”

“Ten,” Avon said. It was a conservative number but if he pushed Zen’s systems too far and the teleport burned out they would all be screwed. “Anything they can carry off the ground can come with them. We’ll go back and set things up then one of us will come back with the teleport bracelets.”

 

“I’m not letting them pay us,” Avon could almost hear Blake’s teeth grinding.

“If the Idans thinks we’re breaking our word we will have trouble,” Avon warned. “At the very least they will let everyone they encounter know that we are irrational and therefore unreliable.”

Blake huffed annoyance. “I’ll never understand this sort of stubborn pride. They can’t afford it.”

The idea of Blake baffled by stubbornness made Avon smile. “It’s not pride, it’s caution. Wouldn’t you prefer to trust your life to a stranger who has a good financial reason to help you over someone whose motives are obscure?” 

Blake scowled at him. “I certainly wouldn’t trust anyone who demanded a hundred thousand credits from a bunch of desperate refugees for six days’ travel. That’s nothing short of piracy.”

“It was a little high,” Avon conceded. “But then it was meant to provide negotiating space. She was rather more desperate to conclude the deal quickly than I’d anticipated. Given the look of that roof I’m not surprised though. Are you going to risk your neck down there again or shall I? ”

“You operate the teleport,” Blake told him. “Put me down.”

 

Avon had to admit he was impressed by the Idans’ organisational skills. Within four trips they had got the turnaround about as as fast as possible. As each group of ten materialised, members of the previous group stepped forward and took the armfuls of equipment off each to carry down the sealed-off corridors to the hold. Injured settlers were helped down to the far end of the room where the two surviving medics from Ida were operating Liberator’s med unit for the worst injured and patching up the others by hand. 

Newcomers who could walk slid their own bracelets off and took them off any children with them then filed rapidly past the settler who had taken Blake’s place carrying the bracelets down again. Usually within less than a minute or so he was calling for lift up with the next group. It was fast but there were nearly six hundred people to move. The first hour stretched into the second and Avon couldn’t yet see an end in sight. 

Geraint had shed the fur coat in the shipboard warmth, revealing dark hair cropped close to her light brown skin, and had joined him at the console so that she could keep in touch with the people still on the planet through a spare bracelet.

The increasing atmospheric disruption had started to affect the teleport range, forcing Blake to dash back to the flight deck to bring the ship down as far as the top of the fiercely roiling atmosphere and hold it steady there. Avon had been left alone to handle the newcomers. Fortunately so far they were both efficient and co-operative. 

Then the forty fifth group of ten came through coughing with a cloud of dust around them. “Another part of the roof’s gone” one of them called across to Geraint. The bracelet from below had gone suddenly quiet. 

“Casualties?” she demanded. 

The woman shrugged. “Next lot up might know.” 

The next message wasn’t from the ground but from the flight deck. “Zen says the storm’s in that area’s about to get up to thirty percent worse.” Blake said. “How many left down there?”

“About a hundred and forty on original head count.” Avon said. “But they may have further casualties down there. Part of the roof has come down.”

“Hell. OK. Get the rest of them out of there any way you can, Avon. Double up on the teleport, for a start. Blake out.” 

Avon turned to Geraint. “We may not have time to get everyone out,” he said, keeping his voice low and level. A panic up here was the last thing they needed. “They need to leave the equipment behind and pair up, hold onto someone with a bracelet. That way we can bring twenty at a time. It’s a riskier teleport but staying down there with the roof going is worse.” 

“That’s not feasible. We can survive with less people if we must, “ she said, her voice steady. “Without that equipment the entire colony is at risk.” 

Avon pulled the next ten refugees up and watched them sort themselves out and report a handful of deaths from the roof fall. She might be right, for all he knew, but there were other factors to consider.

“Blake will not countenance leaving anyone behind for the sake of replaceable equipment,” he told her. “And I do not intend to be the one to have to tell him that’s what’s happened. You will have to manage without the rest of your equipment. Bring the people up.” 

Geraint turned on him. For the first time there was raw emotion in her voice. “Your Blake might well indulge himself with inane notions of virtue and humanity. He has a ship that he never had to work for. We have nothing but what we can salvage. I will not make the wrong decision now and fail every one of the people I represent because of a renegade’s irrational sentiment about people he’s never even met.” 

“We can source replacements for what you’re bringing up.” Avon suggested.

“We don’t have the funds to pay for them,” the woman said. Her voice was rather less harsh now. “We will need every credit of what little we have left to keep ourselves alive until we can become self sufficient. We’re still bring up vital components for the hydroponics, computers and synthesisers; buying replacements would be far beyond our remaining resources.” She glanced at the console screen showing the storm patterns and her voice hardened again. “Let us hope the roof will hold.” 

Avon was beginning to see why Blake had looked so frustrated. If it was just a matter of money then Liberator had funds to spare. “We could offer credit terms. When your colony is producing surplus...”

His sentence was interrupted by her unamused laugh. “You’re being hunted by the Federation. I know that much about you. In a year’s time you’ll be dead or captured or gone into hiding somewhere or, who knows, maybe by some miracle your Blake will have managed to overthrow the Federation with nothing but a few empty platitudes. None of those are compatible with running a hefty line of multi generational credit to two hundred families in a very minor colony.

“And if we die, what do you have to lose?” Avon demanded, a little put out by the all too accurate summation of his chances.

“Debts don’t die,” she said. “They get transferred. There are worse fates than having a roof fall on your head, and some of them happen to people who try to live on credit they can’t afford. No, Avon. We will have our equipment and we will take our chances. Tell Blake if he asks that I swear that if the rest of the equipment doesn’t come up, neither do the rest of the people.”

Blake didn’t ask. They managed seven more trips before the teleport down failed and Avon checked the controls.

“The landing co-ordinates are blocked by a material obstruction,” he said. “I’m not getting any empty space readouts in that whole area now.” He glanced at Geraint. “I’m sorry. We might just be able to put someone down outside the area if you wanted to check but it’s very rough out there.”

She shook her head. “We know conditions outside the building are lethal. If the roof’s gone, so are they.” 

She sighed in exhaustion, closed her eyes for a second then nodded at Avon. “Thank you for your assistance. I will have to talk to my people now, and we will move everything that’s been brought up into the hold. If you let me have a communicator I’ll tell you when we’re done and you can seal off our quarters.” 

Blake joined Avon as they watched the refugees organising the last loads and the remaining walking wounded down the corridor. 

“You didn’t get all of them out.”

“No,” Avon said. 

“How many?”

“I think about seventy. They will tell us soon enough; the first instalment payment is due.” 

Blake shook his head. “They seem to be a cold hearted bunch.”

“They’re practical and they’re organised, “ Avon said, “and they’ve just saved about a sixth of their planet’s population from what Orac considered a unsurvivable planet wide disaster. I know you don’t like their ideology but you have to give them some credit for results.”

“ _I_ don’t like their ideology?” Blake looked at him. “And here was I assuming you’d also be unimpressed.”

“Personally I think they’d be smarter to take full advantage of your generosity rather than insist on paying for what they can get for free, but then I know your altruism is both irrational and genuine. To them it’s just irrational and therefore unreliable. It’s all a matter of mindsets.” 

“Yes,” Blake said. “And I don’t much like theirs. Let’s get things tidied up here and see what Orac has come up with for a destination. I want them gone as soon as possible.” 

“So capitalists constitute the limit to your goodwill to all men,” Avon muttered at Blake’s retreating back, not sure whether the other man had heard him or not. Then he turned to talk to Zen about ensuring their guests stayed in compulsory isolation. 

 

“This is 1.7384 kilograms of viranium, which at yesterday’s exchange rate is valued at 46,150 Federation credits, constituting half the full payment for the rescue and resettlement of four hundred and five adults and one hundred and thirteen children. Do you have facilities to conduct a confirmatory assay on board?”

Avon took the box from Geraint and glanced inside. It did look remarkably like viranium, which wasn’t naturally found on Ida Six. What a mining and agricultural colony was doing with that quantity of a heavily refined asset generally used for high value transactions between wealthy individuals and corporations was an intriguing question. He wondered just how well off Geraint’s family and the others had been. 

“I’ll get Orac to analyse it. “ He put the box down on the space next to the computer and fished the key out of his pocket.

“Hang on a moment, Avon.” Blake said. “That’s a lot less children than you originally quoted, Geraint.”

She nodded. “Regrettably twenty eight adults and forty three children were still in the building when the roof collapsed. “

“You didn’t bring up all the children first?”

“No.” Geraint looked back down at the list she’d also brought with her. “I have a list here of required essentials to be provided under the terms of our contract. The items below the line are not essentials but if they are available some of my people wish to negotiate individually for their purchase.”

“Don’t stonewall me,” Blake told her. “Even the most atavistic societies that we’ve encountered have still been human enough to know that their children are to be protected. I want to know why you let yours die.”

She put down the list and glared at him. “And if that roof had gone half an hour earlier, what was anyone to do with a hundred traumatised orphans? Children are both the choice and the responsibility of their families, and every child we brought to your ship has at least one parent to care for them. You should be relieved that they are competent enough to look after their own.”

“They’ve all got parents? Didn’t you have children orphaned by the disaster?” Blake demanded. 

“Yes, there were some.”

“And who’s looking after them?”

Her back stiffened. “Since you were unable to bring them up before the roof collapsed it is not an issue. Over two and a half thousand of our colonists, adults and children, have died in the last twelve hours. We were fortunate to save the few we could. You have no legitimate interest in this matter that gives you the right to interrogate me.”

“Those children down there weren’t being looked after at all,” Blake was almost shouting at her. “You’re saying that you let them die because no-one wanted to pay for their upkeep. We would have found them homes if you’d told us.”

“You,” she snapped back. “Everything’s all about you, isn’t it, Blake? You’ll solve all our problems for us. You’ll rescue us your way so that we end up destitute, you’ll grant us free passage on this ship you don’t even own, replace our equipment with funds you’ve stolen from someone else and now take our children from us to be raised as weak, self congratulatory democrats who think that the world will provide them with anything that want just because they want it.”

She slammed the list down in front of him. “We’re paying you for transport and essentials. These are the essentials. Provide them. We lost a lot of good people today, including my friends, my colleagues and several close members of my family. I would like some time alone to rest and to mourn them. Nothing in our contract says I have to stand here and listen to your inane cant.”

Blake watched her walk off the flight deck. “Tell me you don’t for one instant think she’s right?” he said to Avon, who had been watching her too.

“She’s consistent,” Avon said. “The ability to be self sufficiency tends to be a requirement for a successful settler colony.” 

“Colonies that leave their orphaned children to die are hardly my definition of successful.”

Avon shook his head at Blake’s expression. “I’ve no intention of defending someone else’s ethics. Geraint made her position clear enough that you don’t need my commentary. The only opinion I will express is that we should get them resettled as soon as possible, before you two inevitably fall out again.”

 

Geraint was given a room near Avon’s for the duration of the trip. Blake had said stiffly that it would be feasible to allow her passage through the forcefields if she would rather share her fellow settlers’ privations. Geraint had retorted that equating discomfort with moral probity was up there with a belief in a all powerful deity and the validity of elections as ridiculous notions for which there was no solid evidence whatsoever and the room would do very nicely thank you, if Avon would kindly show her how the shower controls worked.

Avon suspected that he couldn’t have slapped Blake down better himself and the Idan woman went up another notch in his estimation. 

 

“This one.” Uva said. She indicated the option on the console. “Dera 3.”

She and Avon had spent the best part of a day and a half searching through Orac’s suggestions and refining the search, and they were now down to one star system with multiple possible planets 

Blake had taken the night watches, thus spending as little time as possible in the Idan’s company, a decision that seemed to suit them both. Avon though it was Blake’s loss; he had found Uva to be highly intelligent, confident and pleasant company, focussed on the task but quite willing to discuss other matters as they came up.

He was a little surprised that a colony of individualists seemed to have conceded quite so much vital decision making to one woman, but they clearly had their own way of doing things and unlike Blake he didn’t feel the need to interrogate her about those ways at every turn.

“Are you sure?” Avon reached across her to point to the one next to it. “Dera 2 has better weather conditions and Orac considers it’s likely to be more fertile. Also it’s uninhabited.”

“That’s why it won’t do. Dera 3 has seven separate population centres of between five hundred and three thousand people- small enough that we can defend ourselves against aggression, large enough to provide trading opportunities and prospects for genetic diversity.”

“Is that last an issue for you?” Avon was curious. “With computer based genetic programmes I would have thought that four hundred adults would be quite sufficient to maintain diversity.”

Uva was rereading the Dera 3 information. She answered without apparent distraction from that task. “Sibling and cousin pairings are common in our culture for the protection of family assets so our genetic diversity will be considerably less than most settlements of similar size.”

“I’m surprised that you allow sibling pairings,” Avon said. “I can think of virtually no other cultures that do.”

“Allow?” Geraint looked up at him and smiled. “Oh dear, Avon. And here was I thinking you might have started to understand us. Only children are subject to restraints on their behaviour. We have complete personal freedom; nobody forbids or allows us anything.”

She was skimming through the brief details of the other Dera 3 colonies. “Do you know if any of these are his lot?” She jerked a head towards the direction of the private quarters where Blake was presumably asleep.

“His lot?”

“Democrats. Socialists. Communists. Egalitarians. Whatever they are calling themselves these days.”

Avon shook his head. “Blake’s never mentioned the Dera system. I can ask him, I suppose. Does it matter?”

“Of course. It’s the most aggressive ideology that we are likely to encounter. Socialists inevitably try to impose their ‘government’” (her nose wrinkled at the word) “on their neighbours. It’s very unlikely that they would leave us alone for long and there’s no long term profit in armed conflict.”

“You seem to know a lot about other forms of government for a colony that’s been isolated for hundreds of years.”

“We weren’t that isolated. People who agreed with our principles came to live on Ida 6, some people left to live elsewhere. We had visitors, we talked to the traders, we had extensive informal links with the Federation and access to their news channels.” 

She sighed. “One hardly needs very much detailed information about the outside world to know that collective government is the most dangerous form of tyranny.”

Avon wasn’t quite sure whether he was ready to concede that much. He’d seen some pretty tyrannical systems and most of them weren’t remotely democratic. “You make collective decisions. Is there a difference?”

Her dark eyes were scathing. “We certainly do not! We co-operate, when it is in our interests to do so, but no-one can be bound by a contract term they did not personally agree to. Majority rule is no more than dictatorship of the majority.” 

“So when you say you’ve chosen Dera 3, that’s not a collective decision?”

“Of course not. That’s my decision. Since I will give the others my analysis and the same information I expect most of them will come to the same conclusion. If they don’t then they can of course go elsewhere.”

Ah. Avon imagined the people in the hold insisting on sixteen different destinations and revised his view of how easy this was going to be. Still, Uva had organised her people very efficiently off the planet and he was fairly confident of her ability to organise them onto another one. Enlightened self interest was all very well in principle but some people, like Uva, (and of course like Blake) were just better than most at getting other people to follow their lead.

 

Reaching the Dera system would take three days. Blake confirmed, reluctantly, that he had no record of any kindred spirits on Dera Three. He told Avon that he felt rather guilty about being part of imposing Geraint’s people on any existing society but he conceded that there seemed to be enough Derans already down there to look after themselves and maybe the existing settlers would be a good influence on “that bunch”. 

Avon thought “that bunch” with their equipment, experience and organisation were likely to be a welcome asset on any frontier world. Not everyone had Blake’s ideological objection to an independent frontier philosophy of self sufficiency and an eye on profits. From what Avon could see the Idans seemed to have a perfectly functional society without the need for free elections, representational democracy, universal suffrage and all Blake’s other favourite ideas. Maybe their way wouldn’t be suited to a large society but they didn’t have a large society, so why not just let them get on with it? 

He didn’t say any of that to Blake, who was cross enough already, but he might have indicated something of his way of thinking to Uva because on the day after she came back from talking to the people in the hold she told him that she had a proposition for him. 

“This ship is clearly worth a great deal but Blake’s ideological fancies mean that you’re not leveraging your asset effectively. If you persuaded your partners to buy you out then you could afford all the start up equipment the colony needed.”

“And give it to you? Why would I do that?” 

She laughed at what she clearly took to be a joke. “And lease it out to the families. You could live a very comfortable life on Dera 3 as resident landlord. Your family would be the most prominent on the planet and your children would have all the benefits of wealth and prestige, while the settlement would have the capital investment we need to become swiftly profitable. Everybody gains.”

“I don’t have a family.” Avon pointed out. 

She smiled at him. “You could have. My preference is for a formal partnership but I’d consider an informal liaison. In the interests of full disclosure I should tell you that I intend to have a child within the next eighteen months.”

Avon had become aware in the last couple of days some level of what he was fairly sure was mutual interest had arisen between then, but this part of the proposition was definitely rather more than he’d expected. He briefly tried to imagine the life that was being offered to him. It was of course impossible.

“I regret to say,” he told her, “that I would find the life of a first generation settler intolerable regardless of my wealth and status and even the quality of my personal relationships. I have not an iota of pioneering spirit and I consider a highly developed and reliable civilised infrastructure absolutely necessary for my comfort.” 

“That’s a pity,” she said, without any sign of taking offence. “As an alternative would you consider fathering my child before I leave? Parental responsibility would of course be entirely mine. I would like an entirely unrelated gene set with a high level of both intelligence and physical attractiveness and yours would seem to suit admirably.”

Avon had never really given the idea of having children any serious thought. He’d been suitably careful to avoid it in relevant circumstances; the Federation frowned on unplanned pregnancies and repercussions could be harsh. The idea of another person, half Avon, struck him for the first time as something remarkable. 

Uva was undoubtedly remarkable herself. Avon had learned enough about her and her culture to know that she’d defend the rights and person of any child of hers with the ferocity of a tigress. A son or daughter of theirs would be likely to be both highly intelligent and thoroughly privileged. If he was going to father a child without the rearing of it, he could hardly provide for a better situation, particularly as he could doubtless endow the putative offspring with significant independent funds from Liberator’s strongroom.

Avon was not inclined to snap decisions. “I’ll consider it,” he told her. 

She nodded. “Then I’ll leave my door unlocked, “ she told him, without a hint of coyness. “After all the only other person this side of the force field who could try it is your Blake and I very much doubt that either my body or my personality interests him.”

 

It didn’t take long for Avon to think better of the whole idea. After all while the advantages to Uva were substantial there was little in it for him. Indulging a brief attraction in exchange for a lifelong hostage to fortune- that wasn’t sensible at all. He had known Uva for three days; that was hardly a basis on which to conclude that she’d be certain to be a fit parent. Also Blake didn’t like her, and while Blake was obviously irrationally biassed Avon felt a certain reluctance to antagonise him to the extent that he suspected that something like this might cause. 

He’d locked his own door out of habit when he’d retired so when the knock came he had a moment to compose himself before opening it. ready to tell Uva of his decision. To his surprise it was Blake who pushed past him into his room.

“I replayed the recordings of your conversation with Geraint during the teleport.” Blake looked furious.

Ah. That would be the doubling up that didn’t happen. Avon had been rather hoping that Blake stayed blissfully ignorant of that. “This is starting to seem like an obsession. Let it go, Blake. What’s done is done. They and their ideology will be off the ship in two days.” 

Blake advanced a step on Avon. “Oh, nothing that woman said surprised me. Same old arrogant and selfish crap with zero concern for the value of human life. It was what you said that I was interested in.”

Avon had done his best to persuade her to bring the people up. What had got Blake so riled? “And?” he said cautiously.

“And you never offered to pay for the equipment they’d have left behind. Not once. They could have brought everyone up. Seventy one lives, Avon. Forty three children. You know we have ample funds. Why didn’t you tell them we’d give them the money?”

“Because it wouldn’t have done any good.” Avon pointed out, coldly. “You tried that with Geraint on the planet, remember? Your generous “offer to help” nearly got us sent away, in which case all of them would have died. Haven’t you ever heard about operating within cultural constraints?”

“I’ve certainly never heard it before from you,” Blake’s hands were opening and closing. He seemed as agitated as Avon had ever seen him. “You’ve never had any time for other people’s stupid and vicious ideas just because they might be culturally conditioned. Yet suddenly you’re defending this bunch of psychotic capitalists at every turn. If you were anyone else I’d have thought she’d turned your head. But you, Avon- I’m beginning to think it’s her ideas that you find irresistible.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, “ Avon said. “I’m not irrational enough to sign up to ideologies. Not like some people.”

“Has she asked you to join them yet?” Blake demanded.

“Yes, as it happens,” Avon was too proud to lie about this. Not to Blake. 

“And will you?”

“I’d want payment for my share in Liberator first.” He had no intention of going but every intention of letting Blake know that he could go. If he chose.

Blake’s voice dropped to something that sounded positively dangerous. “You don’t own a share in Liberator, Avon. Nobody owns this ship. It belongs to the revolution. Whatever that woman says, not everything has a price.” 

He glared at Avon. “If you want to leave, go ahead and leave. I’m sure with your particular skills you won’t stay penniless for long but we owe you nothing. I’m sure you’ll let me know what you decide.” Then Blake turned on his heel and left.

So that was what he was worth to Blake. Precisely nothing. Avon knew he wouldn’t leave but he was damned if he’d let the thought of Blake’s stupid morals dictate everything he should do and there was someone prepared to acknowledge his value, in one respect at least. He walked out of his room and turned the other way, towards Uva’s door.

 

There was a shout from the corridor outside. “Avon!” and “Zen, where the hell is Avon!” Then a hammering at the door. Avon was already there as it slid open. 

Blake blinked at his bare chest. “Your mob are killing each other!” 

“What?” Avon grabbed his gun and jacket and raced after Blake towards the flight deck.

“Zen, report! Have you got that video feed up? “ Blake demanded. 

“Video feed engaged. Twelve shots have been fired.” 

The screen showed a group of a few score people, adults and children, huddled behind barricades made from the foam Liberator had provided for the refugees to sleep on together with bits of the internal walling that had been torn free. 

There was a gap of maybe twenty feet between those and a much larger line of men and women arrayed in front of the rest of the hold’s occupants. The light flickered off guns in the hands of the people manning the barricades and the front line facing them. Three motionless bodies were visible, two in the no man’s land and one behind the blockade.

“They’ve started a fucking war down there,” Blake said. “Where’s Geraint? I want to know what the hell is going on.” 

She spoke from behind Avon. “I protest this undisclosed surveillance in the strongest terms. Turn it off.” 

“What’s happening down there?” Blake demanded.

“Nothing to do with you.” Uva managed to look remarkable composed despite the disarray to the near transparent gown that she’d found in Liberator’s wardrobe room. Her fingers were lacing up the front again as she spoke. 

“It’s my ship!”

“And we are your passengers not your subjects. Mind your own business.”

Having finished buttoning his jacket up Avon thought it time to intervene on Blake’s side. The situation in the hold looked worryingly unstable and a massacre could hardly be in anyone’s best interests. “If you don’t tell us you may not like the methods available to us to find out.”

She looked at him, paused for a moment. “Very well. I protest that I am compelled. The smaller group consists of families who have decided to go to Dera 2.”

“And you’re going to shoot them to stop them?” Blake said. “So much for personal liberties!”

“A ridiculous idea,”she snapped. “ Of course no-one will stop them. The dispute is about the distribution of the resources brought with us. Negotiations have been going on for two days now. It appears that they have broken down.” 

Avon looked at the guns and barricades. That was some breakdown. “Does this happen a lot on your world?”

She gave him a withering look. “This particular matter is difficult to negotiate because of the significance of the outcome. The Dera 2 families were able to contribute relatively little to the pool of partnership resources recovered from our planet so are not entitled under the partnership agreement to take enough with them to make their colony viable.” 

“Can’t you afford to spare enough resources for them to scrape by?” Blake demanded.

“How much we have is not relevant,” Geraint told him. “They don’t own the assets and can’t afford to buy them from us so they can’t have them. That’s simple enough for a child to understand, so even a democrat should be able to comprehend.” 

“You’d rather shoot each other than split up amicably?” Blake’s voice was scathing.

“Nobody wants to shoot anybody,” she insisted. “These are our friends and neighbours out there. We’ve lost too many already. But people have both a right and obligation to defend what’s theirs.” 

“Not on my ship, they don’t. There are innocent children in the middle of that lot.” Blake strode over to the rack of guns and seized one.

“Wait, “Avon caught Blake by the sleeve. “There are nearly four hundred armed adults down there and none of them acknowledge your authority at all. If you walk in there brandishing a gun you won’t walk out again.” 

Blake pulled away. “I’m not going to let them slaughter each other.”

Avon was not going to let Blake get himself killed. “So we’ll find a safer way. How about sleeping gas? We can disarm them while they’re out.”

“Oh, Avon. No.” Uva said quietly. He looked round to see her at the gun rack. She pulled one out, aimed it directly at him then dropped it with a shriek.

“Liberator’s guns defend themselves.“ Avon told her, his gun covering her. “I suppose you might be expected to approve. Were you really going to try to shoot me?”

“I intended to kill both of you,” she said. “What else can one do against tyrants? Did you think I’d stand by and let my people be disarmed and enslaved?”

“Only disarmed for the duration of the flight,” Avon said. “It’s really not the end of the world even for your lot.” He was feeling a little miffed at her readiness to murder him after they’d been getting on so well.

“It’s the first step on the path to slavery.” she told him. “When you have decided we cannot bear arms, next you decide we are unfit to raise our children and you take them away, since we have no way of stopping you.”

“Nobody’s taking your children away,” Avon said.

“We’ll worry about what happens to the children later,” Blake said. “Right now we need to stop a massacre. Is there something we can do to render the people in Hold 6 unconscious fast enough to stop them firing?”

Geraint pulled out a small device from a pocket in the gown that Avon hadn’t been aware that it possessed and Avon shot her in the shoulder. She crumpled, keening in pain. Avon retrieved the device from where she’d dropped it, determined that it was a communicator of some sort and crushed it under his boot. By then Uva appeared to have passed out so he left her and turned to answer Blake’s question.

“We can place a plasma suppressant field over the whole of Hold 6, then pump in gas. It will take a few minutes to render them unconscious but their weapons won’t fire during that time so there’s a limit to how much damage they can do to each other.”

“Zen, do that.” Blake said. “Avon, if you knew we could stop their guns, why the hell haven’t we done it before?”

“Because it’s going to antagonise them to the extreme and they don’t need guns to riot.” Avon said. “We’re going to have to keep them unconscious now until we’ve dumped them all on Dera 3.” 

“Including your girlfriend there?” Blake gestured at the floor.

“Including Geraint, yes. When the gas has taken effect you can give me a hand carrying her down to the med unit.” 

 

The Idans lay unmoving among their guns, their children and the equipment they’d been fighting over. The med unit was keeping Uva sedated below consciousness and healing. Since Blake and Avon were saying nothing to each other Liberator was silent for a long time.

Eventually it was Blake that broke the silence. “They are on my ship and so under my care. I can’t leave those poor children to be brought up as immoral monsters. You know I can’t.”

“Is that what we do now?” Avon asked. “Fly round the galaxy assessing people’s fitness to reproduce and confiscating their offspring? Where exactly in your bold philosophy about human freedoms does that fit?”

“They aren’t philosophical entities.” Blake told him. “They are real, live, human children down there in my hold and can you really claim that being brought up by Geraint and her ilk won’t do them terrible harm?”

Avon snorted. “So do you intend to sterilise the adults as well? If you consider them too subhuman to be allowed to live you might as well shortcut the whole process and just open the hold to space. I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“I can’t execute them just for being sodding libertarians!” Blake said. 

“Well, I’m no expert on moral behaviour but I suspect that if belief in a political philosophy doesn’t make a man deserve death it probably doesn’t make a colony deserve it either.”

Blake paused for a long time. “All right then!” He slammed a hand down on the console. “Have it your way. But they are getting their bloody viridium back whether they like it or not!”

“I’m sure they’ll survive the ignominy somehow.”

Avon broke the long silence following with what was a vague intention of reassurance, not exactly his strong point. “They do love their children, you know.”

“But not other peoples. As for that, they love their guns as well,” Blake said sourly. “And their profits. Come on, Avon. Would you really want a child of yours raised by that lot?”

He must have picked up something odd from Avon’s silence, because he frowned. “What is it? You aren’t really thinking of joining them?”

“No,” Avon said. “I never considered it for a moment. The effort of being ideologically pure- for any ideology- is far too much of a restriction, and besides if you won’t share Liberator I’d be nowhere near rich enough to garner the full benefits of libertarianism.”

“So what is it? Your relationship with Geraint?” Blake looked almost physically pained at saying the words.

“There is no relationship,” Avon said. It seemed quite important to make that point.

“Really? Because. it certainly looked... I suppose that was just casual, then?”

Avon found, irrationally, that he didn’t want Blake thinking that of him either. “That was.... She asked me.” He said the rest in a little of a rush. “She wanted to get pregnant.”

“Pregnant? But you said you weren’t joining them!”

“No, of course not. It was a set of unrelated genes, that’s all. A donation, I suppose.”

“You were planning to father a child and abandon it?” Blake looked absolutely floored by the idea. 

“Hardly abandon. It would have been perfectly well provided for. “ Avon realised that mentioning the child had been a mistake. He’d vaguely thought that Blake might have been charmed by the idea. One could never tell with Blake but he did seem to like children.

“In a colony of libertarians? You wanted your child to grow up believing that self is the only thing that matters, that everything has a price? That helping people in need is weak and irrational? Hell, Avon. You’d abandon your own child to a group of people that abandon unwanted children? What the fuck were you thinking?”

They weren’t abandoned, Avon wanted to say. They were just going to be saved last, for eminently practical reasons. But he had a feeling that it might be the last thing Blake ever let him say to him, so he kept quiet. 

Blake stomped up and down the flight deck for a few minutes, apparently appalled into speechlessness. Avon just watched him.

“I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out what you might want,” Blake said eventually, in a slightly calmer voice. “I never though of children. I don’t think I could allow it on Liberator, not with what I need her for. I suppose you might have to leave after all.”

This was worse than Blake’s yelling. “I am not broody,” Avon snapped. “I don’t like children and I can think of few things worse than having to look after one.”

“So why were you about to conceive one when I interrupted you?” Blake frowned. “I’m presuming that was actually beforehand. She isn’t already..?

Avon sighed. “No we didn’t and she isn’t. And as to why, I suppose I was flattered by an intelligent and attractive woman.”

Blake snorted. “You’re susceptible to flattery? All this time and now you tell me!”

“A little. If it’s sincerely meant,” Avon said stiffly. 

“Well that particular revelation’s of sod all use to me right now,” Blake said, “since right now the only sincere thing I can tell you is that you’re a fucking idiot. Did you have to have sex with her?”

“It’s the normal way of producing a pregnancy,” Avon pointed out.

“Her lot are both relatively high tech and obsessive about personal liberties. I imagine selling her a test tube of screened and quality controlled ‘product’ would have been quite normal from her point of view. I suppose you considered that and decided against it for rational self interested reasons?”

Avon was starting to get distinctly bothered by Blake’s attacks. “Does the moral prudery come with the revolutionary territory or is it a personal failing?”

“Oh, it couldn’t be more personal,” Blake retorted. “I thought a great deal better of you.”

“Your mistake, obviously,” Avon said. “Is there anything else that you think you have a right to know?”

“No,” Blake said.

“In that case I’m going back to bed.”

 

They flew the whole ship down to a reasonably promising looking site on Dera Three then opened the hold doors and tipped Liberator slightly and extremely carefully onto its edge until a huge pile of equipment and people slid very slowly out and was scattered over a hundred foot length of the short grass. Blake placed the box of viridium down at the edge and Avon carried the unconscious Uva out of the ship and put her down next to it.

“Done?” Avon asked Blake.

“If you are.” Blake was still being short with him. 

“Then let’s get out of her before they wake up. I’m fairly certain we haven’t made any friends here.”

He followed Blake back up to the Liberator and they took off, in silence again.

Blake finally noticed Avon’s smile.

“What?”

“Since you’ve brought to my attention Zen’s ability to play back conversations it has turned out remarkably useful. I was able to confirm my impressions during our little contretemps yesterday. It’s not the sort of thing that I would have wanted to get wrong.”

“What are you talking about,” Blake demanded.

“You’re a little more careless than usual when you’re angry, “ Avon told him. “It seems that I’ve been on your mind recently a great deal. When you’ve decided that you’re through being furious with me, come to my room and we can discuss an arrangement where the rewards outweigh the risks for both of us. Now I’m going to get something to eat. Want anything?”

“No,” Blake said. “What do you mean...”

“Think about it,” Avon told him, and went off to find supper.

 

He’d barely closed his door for the night when there was a knock on it. This time it could only be Blake. Avon paused for a moment to calm his nerves. Maybe this would actually work. Then he opened the door and smiled. “That was quick. Come in.”

“I decided that if I was going to wait until I was no longer angry with you I might never get here.” Blake stepped in, found himself somewhere to sit. “Sod that and sod your ideas of rational self interest. This isn’t any sort of negotiation. As you have so astutely noticed, I feel quite passionately about you and I have for a while now. But if you can’t or won’t say something of the same back then this is rotten and I won’t touch it with a barge pole, whatever one of those might be.”

Passionately. Blake felt passionately about him. Avon could hear his own thumping pulse. This was far more than he’d let himself expect. 

“Yes.” he said, trying not to make it sound too desperate. 

“I need a little more than that, Avon.”

Avon forced himself to think straight. He mustn’t screw this up. “Yes I want you. Yes you’re the reason that I can’t leave even when reason says I should. I am not accustomed to throwing my heart on the ground in front of anyone, not even you. Will that do?”

“More than enough,” Blake said.

“Damn,” Avon said, just a little more relaxed. “I’d have said less if I thought I could get away with it. Is that enough discussion, do you think?” 

“No, “ Blake said. He wasn’t looking nearly as happy as Avon felt. “Or maybe yes. I can’t think of anything else that needs saying, but... abandon a child, Avon! And with that woman! It’s not the sort of thing I can just put out of mind because I want to kiss you at last.” He looked away from Avon, towards the door. “Maybe you were right, and I should have waited. But I thought maybe if we’d got this far it wouldn’t matter so much, and it turns out that it matters more.” 

Avon stared at him in disbelief. “So this was all about getting me to make a declaration that you had no intention of following through on?” He was starting to feel a small knot of anger deep in his stomach.

“No! Yes! I don’t know, Avon.” Blake sounded genuinely anguished. It didn’t soothe Avon at all. “If only you weren’t...” He tailed off. 

“Weren’t what, exactly? Have I failed to be a faithful disciple to your damn Cause? Have you only just noticed after all these months that I care primarily about myself, in which case who the hell did you think you were falling for? Or is this just boring, conventional jealousy that you found me with someone else?” He kept his voice even with an effort. “Since you’ve deliberately manoeuvred me into this compromised position you could at least let me know what I’m dealing with here.” 

“I can’t,” Blake told him. “I’m not sure myself. I’m sorry, clearly I should never have come here. I need time to think about everything.”

“Oh, take all the time you need, “ Avon snarled. “Just take it somewhere where I don’t have to look at you. Get out!” 

Blake looked utterly miserable. He stood up and walked out without another word.

 

“How did the drop go?” Jenna asked. 

“The what? “ Blake said.

“The message drop. The reason you went.”

“Oh, that. Badly.” 

“Badly? That’s it?” Vila said. “Three weeks you’ve been gone and we get one word out of you? Did anything exciting happen? Brushes with death, heroic rescues, profitable raids, really thrilling games of Space Monopoly? Anything?”

“There was a not particularly heroic rescue and someone tried very ineffectually to kill us both,” Avon said. “We could have made a hundred thousand credits legitimately but Blake decided that his ethics didn’t allow us to take it. We didn’t play Space Monopoly. Will that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Not entirely but I know better than to expect you to fill in the gaps, Avon. Anything to add?” Vila asked Blake.

“We made a lot of mistakes,” Blake glanced at Avon. “I’d rather not linger on the memory of any of them. Shall we get going?”

Avon turned away. “Why not?” he said. It was a second or two before he could trust his expression enough to turn back again and by then Blake was talking about their next destination and the moment, like all moments, had passed.


End file.
